"Meantime, I see our friends from yardg -- RogerA, Neuro, Charles Martin -- have retreated to their clubhouse to lick their wounds. (Although the truculant but ever-game Richard Aubrey is doing his best to fill in.) I trust that they will be back. We need the creative tension. As Orson Welles says in The Third Man, "Look at Italy. It had wars, revolution, great art, the Renaissance. Whereas Switzerland lived with 2,000 years of peace and what did it do? It produced the cuckoo clock!"

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Thirdly, ferocity: The Swiss spared no-one, refused quarter to their enemies—even prisoners who could afford a ransom were mercilessly slaughtered; they violated terms of surrender given to garrisons and pillaged towns that had capitulated—not a small part of the fear they inspired sprang from this bloody reputation.

With this ruthlessness went a strongly commercial attitude to war—Point d'argent, point de Suisse ("No money, no Swiss") went the saying; if not paid they simply marched off, no matter how that left their employer. If regularly paid they were normally loyal, but there were some examples of their being bribed to change sides. They were also independent and headstrong, their wish to get the job over often leading to attacks without orders, nor would they accept any discipline from outsiders.

Sounds like not much has changed. More here.I don't believe the Swiss really settled down until 1848 or so, and they had labor unrest and strikes during WWI.

Half Lovelady's post is a quote,what an uninventive little swine he is.

"Meantime, I see our friends from yardg -- RogerA, Neuro, Charles Martin -- have retreated to their clubhouse to lick their wounds.(cliche) (Although the truculant but ever-game(cliche) Richard Aubrey is doing his best to fill in.(cliche)

I trust that they will be back. We need the creative tension. As Orson Welles says in The Third Man, "Look at Italy. It had wars, revolution, great art, the Renaissance. Whereas Switzerland lived with 2,000 years of peace and what did it do? It produced the cuckoo clock!"

CSJ Review,a kind of a staff magazine that nobody else reads,like "Goat Dung Collecting Through the Ages"?The ability of these people to build a tower of ordure upon which they sit and crow like a cock on a midden is one of the great mysteries of the modern age.Somehow we are expected to admire the fact that they have constructed this edifice and climbed to the top.

Like the fella says, in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Is he postulating that YARGB is Switzerland? If so, he only reveals the depth of his ignorance. The man is a cretin in service to a dead philosophy. He deserves nothing but the contempt that he has earned>

Would you postulate him as a figure of emulation for the students of the Columbia School of Journalism. If so, your standards are called into question.

Do you deem us incapable of understanding the political posturing of the Pressident? Why so? He is only a step in a direction that I (at least) find more appealing than the slave idolatry of the opposition.

Would you choose the incondign bitch Hillary in his stead? If so, on what pretext?

My father joined the Navy when he left high school and many years later spent enough time in journalism classes to obtain an undergraduate degree in such. He spent the years I knew him editing and publishing information for the use, primarily, of the building trades.

The extent of his career advice to me was that he wouldn't recommend doing anything he'd done. He'd also worked in movie publicity in Hollywood for a time before my birth.

I, being me, edited my high school newspaper and had Navy recruiters calling the house right up to the point where I decided to accept being accepted at Berkeley.

I read here and elsewhere for enjoyment. Elsewhere hasn't recently included Rosen though I did click on the link to make sure that the commenter in question had mangled the line.

Take your own advice. Sit down and have a cold one. If your inclination is to watch a movie while doing so, you couldn't do much better than The Third Man. I choose, at this time, not to contribute to creating tension where it concerns dead philosophies and/or deader politicians. Sorry.